Stoke - Performance Data & Ratings
- Thread starter CroJack
- Start date
Wood, Cabango and Darling, our 3 CBs occupy places in our bottom four performers. Not difficult to see why we let in so many goals. Not that they are solely responsible as it's a team effort to defend (as well as attack) and Grimes was doing sod all to help from midfield.
Yankee_Jack
Key Player
Perhaps it’s time we swapped Grimes and Fulton. Have Fulton partner Allen as pivots and push Grimes to line up with Cooper and Whittaker behind Cullen
Attacking-wise, we were ok in the first half. We created three clear-cut chances, the one Whittaker scored from, the one he missed, and the other one Piroe missed. Is this enough? No. We have to create more clear-cut chances if we want to score more, and this is because you can't expect our attackers to score from every clear-cut chance we create. This would be unrealistic.
Defensively we were shambles. Two many sloppy passes, giving the ball away in our half (third) in dangerous areas, not tracking back, not blocking crosses, poor man-marking, and not marking central areas in our box. We had three centre-backs and only Harry Darling seemed to know what he was doing. It was Wood who had to be subbed, not Darling. I am not saying Darling was good, but he was positionally disciplined, which can't be said about Wood and Cabango. In the chart Stoke Home -1st Half Performance the red lines represent errors, and in Darling's case most of those errors are crosses allowed.
We allow too many crosses and I am not surprised that we do that when we play three at the back. Our slow centre-backs are forced to play wide and mark opposition's wingers, which is a David against Goliath battle when it comes to blocking crosses. Unfortunately, it's not much better when we play four at the back. Sorinola and Manning are simply not good enough at blocking crosses.
Because it's unrealistic to block all opposition crosses, the next line of defence has to be good. The trouble is it's here where we fail miserably. Here is how we conceded the second goal against Stoke.
Defensively we were shambles. Two many sloppy passes, giving the ball away in our half (third) in dangerous areas, not tracking back, not blocking crosses, poor man-marking, and not marking central areas in our box. We had three centre-backs and only Harry Darling seemed to know what he was doing. It was Wood who had to be subbed, not Darling. I am not saying Darling was good, but he was positionally disciplined, which can't be said about Wood and Cabango. In the chart Stoke Home -1st Half Performance the red lines represent errors, and in Darling's case most of those errors are crosses allowed.
We allow too many crosses and I am not surprised that we do that when we play three at the back. Our slow centre-backs are forced to play wide and mark opposition's wingers, which is a David against Goliath battle when it comes to blocking crosses. Unfortunately, it's not much better when we play four at the back. Sorinola and Manning are simply not good enough at blocking crosses.
Because it's unrealistic to block all opposition crosses, the next line of defence has to be good. The trouble is it's here where we fail miserably. Here is how we conceded the second goal against Stoke.
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